The Journals of Josiah Edwin Hickman
Introduction
During the period of 1890 to 1936, Josiah Edwin Hickman wrote his personal events, desires and feelings, objectives in life, etc. in fourteen (14) journals (A to N). He frequently mentioned in his journals that he felt that his posterity should be more familiar with his life and understand him more intimately. Being a proud man, and well educated, he wanted to be the example for all to follow. This was very evident in his religious endeavors and testimony of the fullness of the Gospel that he so dearly loved and wanted to share with all who would listen.
These journals that he wrote in were simple ledger-type bound books of various sizes (5 ¾ x 9 to 7 ½ x 9 ½ inches) varying from 145 to 300 pages in number. He not only wrote on both sides of these pages, but on the inside of the front and back covers, as well as on the fly-leaves. Some notes were written in the margins, side-ways, vertical or horizontal. Later as he read what he had written, he might scratch out a letter or word, insert a letter or even a sentence, or change the thought completely. Also in the margin, he would write a few words to identify the paragraph he had written, as to subject or thought, so one could quickly locate a specific item of interest. An occasional page had a letter or a note pasted onto the page. There were over 2500 pages of his handwritten entries. The shades of ink varied from a normal color to faint, faded impression on the page.
It was interesting to find spelling or grammatical errors on one page, but the same words or punctuation correct on a following page. He re-duplicated some words for no apparent reason, with or without the use of parentheses. Names would be misspelled on occasion, while other times a different spelling was used. This was evident even with his own children’s names (especially “LeVon”). Frequently, he did not use a period to end the sentence or with the use of quotation marks, often the final mark was forgotten.
We made no attempt to correct his spelling, grammatical errors, etc., this being intentional (each page was proof-read by one of us). His vocabulary included many words that we were unfamiliar with, “older” in usage, but the dictionary proved him correct most of the time.
Journals A and B were typed by Marva Hickman Hansen who had been given the records to keep by Grandmother Martha Lawisch Hickman. As many of you might remember, Grandmother Hickman lived her last few years with her daughter, Marva, in Paradise, Utah. She died June 11, 1945. Martha had all of Josiah’s journals, personal records, journals of clippings, letters, etc. These were in her possession until her death, at which time Marva assumed this important responsibility. We believe that the two journals, A and B, were typed by Marva around 1955. Due to Marva’s declining health, hospitalizations, and gradual loss of vision, she did not do any further typing. In 1975, before Marva’s death on March 19, 1980, Gayle Hansen (Clark’s wife) typed journals C-D-E. These three journals were then given to Louis Hickman to print (100 copies of each journal, approximately 102 pages, both sides) in preparation for binding at a later date.
After Marva’s death, the records were in the care of her daughter, Patricia Hansen Hendricks.
Nothing more was done with the journals until I (LaMoyne Hickman) talked with Pat and Louis in February 1989, while I was in Logan. At that time we were worried and concerned about the journals deteriorating further with time, so Louis microfilmed the journals we had at that time. Journals F-N were available, but journals A-E were not to be found until four months later. After all the journals were placed on Microfilm by Louis, Pat placed them in a secure place, along with the microfilms.
It was decided to have me bring the journals home and Deborah and I would proceed to type the remaining nine journals. We both found it to be a rewarding task. The information we learned was so interesting, enlightening, humorous, sad, etc., but we agreed that we had received a special blessing, along with insight to our wonderful heritage.
The journals were completed in December 1989. Each original copy was sent to Louis to have printed, as we finished typing them. A copy in my possession (given me by Thorval L. Hickman Jr.) of journals A and B were also sent to Louis to have printed.
Thus, by the time of our wonderful family reunion in Logan, in July 1989, eight of the journals had been copied and bound in a simple fashion, to be made available for those attending the reunion. Additional copies were made for individuals and families who could not attend.
These last six journals thus complete an era in the life of our most illustrious grandfather, Josiah Edwin Hickman, a true saint to the end. Due to increasing health problems and decreasing vision, he was unable to write in a journal during his last few months of life in 1937.
The above introduction is actually a post-script added to the end of the second volume of Josiah’s diaries. It was written by LaMoyne Hickman of Jacksonville, Florida. Karen Hickman Bush, of Page, Arizona has a copy and scanned Journals A to F and converted them to text, then she made them available for the Hickman Family website. She recently (August 2009) loaned me her complete set and I scanned journals G to N, then my son Ben converted them to PDF documents. Karen also had created documents from journals A through F and added footnotes as an aid to the reader's better understanding of the people and events Josiah describes. These have also been converted to PDF format and placed on the Hickman website.
--Steve Richardson
Additional Note:
To view the journals, you will need to have the Adobe Reader installed on your computer. This software may already be loaded on your computer, but if it isn't, it's free and available here.
The journals have been saved in Adobe's PDF format. Journals A to F were created by converting Karen Bush's DOC files to PDF, while the files for journals G through N were created by converting the page images to PDF. Generally this process results in files that are about 7 times as large, but this method allows you to view the actual pages as they were printed for the Josiah Hickman family.
If you were to print all the pages of journals A through N, you would have a book that is 993 pages in size. The size of each journal in bytes and in pages is as follows:
A 233,000 bytes34 pagesB 312,000 bytes 49 pagesC 525,000 bytes 84 pagesD 538,000 bytes 90 pagesE 312,000 bytes 48 pagesF 484,000 bytes85 pagesG 2,543,000 bytes 64 pagesH 2,298,000 bytes 59 pagesI 3,363,000 bytes 81 pagesJ 1,841,000 bytes 50 pagesK 2,478,000 bytes 64 pagesL 5,322,000 bytes 135 pagesM 2,680,000 bytes 65 pagesN 3,316,000 bytes 85 pages